Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic and his nationalist Serbian Progressive Party, the SNS, conceded defeat on Sunday night after the student-led opposition movement won a landslide in the parliamentary election.
Polls closed at 8pm Swedish time, and shortly after 9.30pm Vucic acknowledged the result. "We don't have final results yet, but based on a sample... it is clear that we have lost the election," said Vucic, who has ruled the country since 2012.
A projection from Ipsos/CeSID put the opposition Studentlistan at 52 percent and the SNS at 39.3 percent, The Guardian reported. That would give the Studentlistan 138 seats in parliament, 12 more than needed for a majority of its own. Svenska Dagbladet reported a late-evening projection giving the movement 134 seats and Vucic's party 106.
Turnout was the highest in 34 years, according to Reuters.
The snap election was held after two years of extensive student protests against the government. The protests gathered pace after 16 people died when a roof collapsed at a newly renovated railway station in Novi Sad two years ago. The grassroots Studentlistan is led by Serbian students with no previous political experience, who want to reform the country and accuse the government of corruption.
Long queues formed at polling stations during the day and several incidents were reported. "We are deeply concerned about reported violent incidents at a number of polling stations. Serbian citizens must be able to exercise their democratic right to vote in a peaceful and safe environment," wrote Andreas von Beckerath, the EU ambassador to Serbia, on X.
SVT Europe correspondent Niklas Svensson said Serbia's young people felt for the first time in a long while that political change was possible. "That says something about what is happening here," he said. In an analysis for The Guardian, Ashifa Kassam described the result as a political earthquake and wrote that the students "took the opportunity to transform the movement into political power. Svenska Dagbladet's Tomas Lundin wrote that wild celebrations marked Serbia late in the evening as people took to the streets.
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Based on reporting by Aftonbladet, Omni and Svenska Dagbladet.